Pragmatic ambiguity and Kripke’s dialogue against Donnellan

Carlo Penco

doi:10.25247/p1982-999x.2019.v19n1.p103-134

Abstract

In this paper I discuss Donnellan’s claim of the pragmatic ambiguity of the distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite des-criptions. The literature on the topic is huge and full of alternative analysis. I will restrict myself to a very classical topos: the challenge posed by Kripke to Donnellan’s distinction with the case of a dialogue on an attempt to update a misdescription. I claim that to treat the problem of the referential use of definite descriptions we need not only to take into account the context of utterance, but also the cognitive context with its epistemic restrictions and the possible different contexts of reception of the same utterance. I try to show different aspects of what can be called “pragmatic ambiguity”, which seem not correctly considered by Kripke, and connect them to the basic tenets of Grice Cooperative principle.

Highlights

In this paper I discuss Donnellan’s claim of the pragmatic ambiguity of the distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions
Stalnaker agrees and poses a further possibility about the idea of pragmatic ambiguity, concerning the problems posed by presuppositions
Does the idea of pragmatic ambiguity have some interesting theoretical consequences on the definition of the content of an assertion? I will offer different arguments whose main point will be the defence of the idea that an assertion may have at the same time different contents depending on different uses, presuppositions and cognitive contexts

Summary

Pragmatic ambiguity

We often find in pragmatics many tools and topics used in the field of rhetorics in new way. Donnellan (1968) wrote about a pragmatic ambiguity between the attributive and referential uses of descriptions, and Stalnaker (1970), commenting on Donnellan’s paper, explains what is means “pragmatic ambiguity”. The two intended interpretations are not explicit in the utterance, and Donnellan claims that there is some kind of ambiguity that is neither syntactic nor semantic, but pragmatic. Stalnaker agrees and poses a further possibility about the idea of pragmatic ambiguity, concerning the problems posed by presuppositions (a typical case discussed in pragmatic analysis). A pragmatic solution tyically accepts a Russellian analysis for all the cases presented by Donnellan: a speaker may even use a false definite description, interpreted in the standard Russellian way, and by some kind of Gricean implicature, the hearer gets the right content, maybe just realizing that the description is false. The topic of pragmatic ambiguity of Donnellan’s distinction instead is the topic of the present paper

Belief Reports

Belief update: a test for semantic or pragmatic interpretations

Communication strategies: shifting contexts and uncertain reasoning

Shifting contexts of reception

Bounded rationality and default charity principle

Conclusions